Did grand jury get it right? Law experts differ

One veteran Philadelphia civil rights lawyer found the evidence exonerating Officer Darren Wilson murky. There were no accounts of Michael Brown's appearing to reach for a gun, no flash of something silver, the lawyer said.

Another defense lawyer said he was both bemused and surprised to see all the attention paid by the grand jury to exculpatory evidence.

"Did that happen because it was [about] a police officer?" the lawyer asked. "I think the answer is probably yes."

But a former prosecutor who won convictions against Philadelphia police for brutality was won over. He said the physical evidence alone established that there was a struggle at the patrol car, that Michael Brown was not shot in the back - and that Wilson should not face charges.

Those experts and others reacted swiftly Monday night to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch's nationally televised explanation of why a grand jury did not bring charges against Wilson in the Aug. 9 killing of Brown in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb.

David Rudovsky, a University of Pennsylvania law professor widely considered the dean of the civil rights bar in the region, said McCulloch failed to present a coherent narrative to explain Wilson's actions.

Rudovsky and others were struck by McCulloch's emphasis on precisely how cloudy the evidence was.

"One thought: Murky cases get charged all the time, with witnesses differing, and even with inconsistent statements and forensics," Rudovsky noted. "They should not proceed to trial, but why such care in this case - but not in cases not involving police as possible defendants?"

Michael J. Engle, a former president of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he, too, was struck by the emphasis on contradictory evidence.

"Usually prosecutors convene an indicting grand jury to look at the evidence for them," Engle said. "But they go into it with a preconceived idea about what charges are appropriate."

L. George Parry, a Philadelphia defense lawyer who has served as both a state and federal prosecutor, said that contradictory eyewitness testimony aside, the physical evidence supported Wilson's account.

He said the undisputed autopsy results showing a bullet entrance wound in the crown of Brown's head suggested the 18-year-old had been charging Wilson when the officer fired.

Noting that a running man can cover 21 feet in under two seconds, Parry said the case amounted to what an official review team would call a "good" police shooting.

"If the guy is running at you, you can drop him," Parry said. "You have to."

Defense lawyer Peter F. Vaira, who was U.S. attorney for the Philadelphia region from 1978 to 1983, said authorities in Missouri simply could not proceed with a criminal case, given the conflicts among witnesses.

"When I took over as prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's Office, we had an enormous amount of allegations of police brutality," Vaira recalled Monday night.

But, he added, "we had one case in which the person was shot by police [in which] we couldn't find any witnesses that could explain what happened without being contradicted by five other people."

"We decided that we didn't have anybody we could put on the stand that wouldn't be contradicted by someone else," he said. "And we just gave up."

Michael Pileggi, a Philadelphia lawyer who has often brought civil rights suits, said the decision only ends one chapter.

He predicted future lawsuits that will examine not only Wilson's actions but the systemic training and policies of the Ferguson police force. Federal investigations by the Justice Department are continuing as well.

Said Pileggi, "I don't think this ends the story."